Chapter 24 #2
I felt like a real Holliday when I found myself worrying over Kev’s limp and fussing over what he needed.
I wanted all parents to approve of me, but especially Kev.
And incredibly, this wasn’t even hard to get—he didn’t hold it over my head like a lofty and unattainable prize.
Kev loved freely, and welcomed strays. I could tell by the way Hannah and Tessa acted like he was their dad too. Hell, even Dean did.
On our short drive back to his place, Mike didn’t say much.
He asked if I’d remembered my bag—yes, but only because I’d left it in the car in the first place—and the leftover boiled potatoes Kev had put in a container for me to take home. That was clutched in my lap.
At home—Mike’s home, he went inside without saying anything else. I trailed after him, miserable, but aware this situation was of my own making so I wasn’t allowed to be the saddest person about it.
I would miss the way Mike laughed. The way he made me feel.
The way he teased me and everyone around him and threw himself wholeheartedly into things, voicing his opinion with his whole chest. And I would miss sitting in the passenger seat with his hand on my leg, miss him thrusting inside me, calling me Princess, and sharing orgasms. I would deeply miss feeling him come—he’d only come inside me the one time, and I wanted it again and again and again.
I wanted to be filled with him, claimed as a Holliday.
But Emily Ludlow had put a pin in that balloon animal.
“Mike, will you come back so we can talk?” I asked the empty hallway.
“I don’t know, can we?” His voice from his room was muffled.
I soon saw why. The door was shut. His door was never shut. He always kept it open, saying it was in case any of his chickens came through the cat door in the middle of the night and needed a cuddle. I’d thought this was a joke, but the better I got to know him, the less sure I was.
“Mike?” I rapped on his door. “Can I come in?”
“Shouldn’t you be packing?”
So it was like that.
“I’m sorry that I was acting weird at dinner.
You already know about the hills and the snails and the trains.
” I sank to the floor with a sigh, wrapping my legs crisscross applesauce as I leaned against the wall opposite his door—turquoise of course, same as his floor.
“Sometimes when I get worked up, I hit warp speed.”
“Lyssa.” Mike growled from the other side of the door, and I was taken aback by the sound of his belt hitting the floor. “I know that. And you don’t need to apologize for it.”
“My mom owns the apartment I live in in New York. I can’t afford to live there without that. Mom called tonight because she wants me to go back to America and to a proper college. She’d given me a few months to find some other fashion job. But if I want to keep the apartment, I have to go now.”
To my surprise, the door cracked open and Mike stuck his head out. He didn’t say anything though.
Eventually, I realized what he was waiting for.
“I’m sorry I sprang this news on you. I convinced myself that I could stay.
But my views have plummeted since the Paul thing, and while it’s turned a corner now, it’ll be a while before I can get the kind of brand deals and sponsorships I need for real income.
My professional reputation is still in the toilet.
That’s the main thing I want to go back to fix.
I have no idea how, but I want to try. I was going to—” I was this close to telling him that I’d been imagining throwing myself into life in Woodville. But I thought better of it.
We were both too intense, too similar. I had a short attention span, and Mike threw his whole self into things: it was impossible that our level of intensity could have any kind of staying power. It was ridiculous for me to be thinking like I had been this morning.
For once in my life, I had to be sensible and make decisions for my future instead of my present.
Not to mention:
“I know that I was probably a factor in what happened between you and Oz yesterday.”
Mike wasn’t a liar, so he couldn’t deny it.
After a beat, he said, “Oz was a dick long before you got here.”
“But he said I was a bad look for you, didn’t he? That’s why you went off at him in your meeting.”
I’d known in my bones I was responsible for ruining his pitch. Part of me had known the second I saw him in the garage with his punching bag; I just hadn’t wanted to entertain the thought.
The ultimatum from my mother had brought me crashing back down to earth and forced me to see myself clearly. I needed to go back home to America and to my cat. I didn’t belong in this fantasyland, with the fantasy man and his fantasy family.
His potential was too significant for him to waste it on me.
Mike was shaking his head, still trying to spare my feelings.
“Oz reminded everyone of some of my more colorful escapades. I fucked a woman the morning of her wedding, I screwed Monica—back before she was a raging bitch. Anyway, the majority of the Association thinks the only thing that matters to me is chasing pussy.”
I winced.
He sighed. “And who can blame them?”
If I weren’t me—if I weren’t a woman who had recorded herself confronting the married man she’d slept with, if I’d been less selfish showing off Mike’s hands in my content and throwing myself at him…
then Mike might have been able to convince the Tararua Rural Entrepreneurs Association that his wild days were behind him and he was a good investment.
Instead, I’d made it look like he was headed for more of the same.
I sat quietly, drawing a random pattern on the floor with my finger.
Mike stayed in the doorway, the weight of his stare running me through.
I wanted to slump down on the turquoise floor and bleed all the misery out; I wanted to get in a ball gown and get in the bath; I wanted to scream: at Oz, at Paul, at everyone.
And I wanted Mike to say what I wanted to hear.
No, stay, let’s live here together with your cat and have fun, spicy sex every day. I love you.
Instead he said, “I’m sorry for sulking.” He pushed open the door, revealing his mostly naked form, clad only in boxers. “Are you coming to bed?”
“I have to go home. Say you understand.” I begged with my eyes for the opposite.
No, stay, live here, spicy sex. Love.
His gaze fell to the turquoise floor. “Sure, I get it.”
And that was it.
I got to my feet, throwing my clothes on top of his. I had only two days, and there wasn’t a minute to spare.
We made love three times that night. Slowly, like time was something we had a lot of, and then quickly, like we would be torn bodily from each other at any second.
In the morning we had sex again, then Mike fried some of the leftover potatoes from dinner and we ate them in bed, stabbing our two forks at one plate. His were drowned in ketchup, mine were as naked as I was.
I didn’t tell Mike that I loved him. And I knew better than to ask if he loved me.
It would be reckless. Not to mention manipulative.
But in a few years, when I told an anonymized and highly romanticized version of this night to my followers—leaving out my meltdowns and his frustration at not being able to punch his way out of every problem—I would say that as we forked fried potatoes into our mouths, love hung over our heads.
Maybe I would say that as he fed me bites from his fork, he whispered, I love you, girl .
And in return, I wiped the sauce on his lip with my thumb and whispered back, I love you too, Mike .
In time, if I told that story more than I did the real one, that’s how I would remember it.
So we didn’t need to say it.